The midday meal on the moors

A similar work by Hardy entitled A Young ghillie, with setters and dead game, dated 1877, is in the Royal Holloway College Collection, Egham. The models for the ghillie and the dogs appear to be the same, but the ghillie is reaching into the basket in the Holloway picture unlike in the present work. Thomas Holloway formed one of the pre-emminent collections of Victorian Pictures. He was highly selective and amongst the seventy-seven pictures he purchased in a mere two years were Landseer's Man Proposes, God Disposes and Frith's The Railway Station.

For a watercolour by the artist, see lot 91.